Category Archives: odd shots

What with the Canadian dollar reaching dizzying heights over the past week, I’m more than a little bit annoyed to find that my comics still cost me just as much as they used to. My copy of Batman #669 has a Canadian cover price of $3.65, with a US cover price of $2.99. Now that our dollar is actually, for the first time in over thirty years, worth more than the greenback, and considering the comic itself is printed in Canada, I find this baffling.

Luckily for me, the manager of my local shop is a pretty damn fine human being, and has begun adjusting his prices to reflect the rising dollar. That, coupled with my oh-so-generous discount, leaves me with a more than reasonable bill for my weekly stack. In other words, I shouldn’t really be complaining. It will all even out when the tumbling US econmy drags the planet into a crippling recession, in any event.

I was in a bookstore today, and was heading upstairs. I walked towards the escalators, noticing that they were out of order. I took a step, and almost fell on my face. This process was repated for the next two steps before my brain realized the stairs weren’t moving themselves.

This whole episode enfuriated me, not because the escalator was broken, but because my fucking chimp brain couldn’t figure out that the stairs would not be moving when I stepped on them. It wasn;t a surprise: I saw that they were stationary from a mile away. But thousands and thousands of years of human evolution could not defeat the expectation that the stairs would move. I felt unworthy to be human.

Is Batman coming out biweekly right now? It sure feels that way. I think if his whole run had come out with this kind of regularity there would have been a much stronger reaction to it.

Speaking of Batman, is anyone else as impressed as I am by his style shoutouts on the various Club of Heroes members? I picked up on the Chaykin Gaucho, Gibbons Wingman and McGuinness Knight & Squire, but it was cool to read the man himself lay out the inspirations and the reasons behind his choices.

Doesn’t the Thor redesign look about 75% less lame than his previous costume? It was time.

I love hearing that both Ray Stevenson and Kevin McKidd from Rome were attached (with differing levels of certainty) to Marvel films in the same week (Punisher and Thor, respectively).

Isn’t the eventual Avengers movie going to kick ass?

Garth Ennis on Dan Dare: Hells yes. Anyone worried that he’ll somehow Preacherize this vaunted character need look no further than his splendid Battler Britton series, which delivered a two-fisted war story with nary a meat-woman in sight.

Why is Garth Ennis’ Thor: Vikings series so hard to find? I’ve been looking for that paperback for years. And while we’re on the subject, can we get reprints of the Ennis Punisher Marvel Knights stuff? I’ve never read the last dozen or so issues and it’s killing me.

How can I love everything Matt Fraction does and still despise Punisher: War Journal?

the ceebeegeebee vault

Are you a ceebeegee?

Have you tried to explain to someone who has never read a comic book the difference between Earth-1 and Earth-2? Can you name more than three kinds of kyptonite? Do you get excited whenever the mainstream media covers a comic-related story? Do you have longboxes full of comics you occasionally flip through nostagically? If so, my friend, you are a ceebeegee. Welcome home.